Patna ~ In a significant development, Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor on Wednesday announced that he will not contest the Bihar assembly polls, a decision, he claimed, was taken by the party for its greater good.

In an exclusive interview with PTI, the former political strategist also said a“tally of less than 150 seats” for Jan Suraaj will be considered a defeat.

“If Jan Suraaj Party wins the Bihar polls, it will have a nationwide impact. The compass of national politics will point in a different direction,” Kishor asserted.

The Bihar polls will be held in two phases, on November 6 and November 11, and the counting will take place on November 14.

“The party has decided that I should not contest the assembly polls. And therefore, the party has announced another candidate from Raghopur, against Tejashwi Yadav. It was a decision we took in the larger interest of the party. If I were to contest, it would have distracted me from the necessary organisational work,” Kishor said.

The announcement by Kishor, known for crafting several winning campaigns behind the scenes, including that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, drew reactions from his political rivals, including the RJD.

RJD spokesperson Mrityunjay Tiwary told PTI,“Kishor has realised that he and his party will face a humiliating defeat in the upcoming assembly polls. That is why he has announced that he will not contest. He has accepted defeat for the Jan Suraaj Party even before going to the battlefield.”

When asked what he thought of his party's prospects in the elections, the 48-year-old Kishor said,“I can say with certainty that we will be either winning handsomely or receiving a drubbing. I have been stating on record that I expect a tally of either fewer than 10 seats or more than 150 seats. There is no possibility of anything in between.”

He made the averment when asked whether his party would like to support the NDA or the INDIA bloc if the elections threw a hung assembly, terming a fractured mandate as an impossibility.

He, however, added,“A tally less than 150, even if it is 120 or 130, shall be a defeat for me. If we do well, we will have the mandate to transform Bihar and make it count among the 10 most advanced states of the country. If we do not do well enough, it would mean the people have not shown enough confidence in us, and we must continue to carry on with our politics of the street and society (samaj aur sadak ki rajneeti).”

In the wide-ranging interview, Kishor also predicted that the ruling NDA in Bihar will certainly be defeated, citing the inability of the BJP-led coalition to finalise seats and candidates.

Kishor, who recently said the JD(U) would struggle to win even“25 seats” in the 243-strong assembly, claimed that the picture has only grown bleaker for the party headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

“The NDA is definitely on its way out and Nitish Kumar will not return as chief minister,” asserted Kishor, who has worked closely with the JD(U) supremo, both as a poll analyst and later, for a brief period, as a party colleague.

“You do not need to be a psephologist to fathom what is in store for the JD(U). In the last assembly polls, Chirag Paswan staged a revolt just a few days ahead of the announcement of elections and fielded candidates, many of whom were inconsequential, against nominees of Kumar's party, causing its tally to crash to 43,” recalled Kishor.

He also claimed that there was“complete chaos” in the NDA, and it was still unclear which seats the BJP would contest and where the JD(U) wants to field its candidates.

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